


the beauty of love as it was made to be

by gillaaan



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 10:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2306552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gillaaan/pseuds/gillaaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beatrice's clock hits zero when she's fourteen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the beauty of love as it was made to be

Beatrice's clock hits zero when she's fourteen. She doesn't even have to look at it to realise that it's happened - just the reaction she has to meeting this boy called Benedick is enough. Still, she glances down at her wrist, her bracelet shifting just enough for her to see that there it is, no more counting down.

  
She kicks herself inwardly. Even though she had always made it a point of not looking at her clock, covering it up with bracelet after bracelet and never ever working out what day, hour, minute, _second_ she would meet her soulmate, now she wishes she had known so that she had time to prepare herself.

  
Instead of yelling, or maybe running away, which is what she would like to be doing, she forces herself to stay still and focus on the fact that although she feels like her face could be portraying a million emotions at once after what's just happened (she hopes that's not the case), Benedick isn't reacting one bit, and that can mean only one thing. Although he's Beatrice's soulmate, she isn't his. Which is, you know, totally fine.

  
She spends the whole summer trying to pretend that her clock hasn't hit zero (only confiding in Hero during a moment of weakness and then having to make her pinky swear never to tell _anybody_ ), and instead making the most of her time with Ben. Unsurprisingly, they had got on famously, which Bea thought was like a particularly unfunny joke - why couldn't she have one of those stories where her soulmate was someone that she hated? That way it wouldn't hurt so much when she thought about how Ben was going to find his soulmate one day and wouldn't even want to give her the time of day.

  
As the end of summer nears, however, she finds herself increasingly frusrated by some of the things Benedick says. To be exact, his almost daily mantra of "Oh, no, I don't even care about ever meeting my soulmate. Like, I don't think I even believe in fate or the soulmate thing at all. I mean, I live in the moment, right? Who cares about anything as permanent as soulmates?".

  
The thing is, she doesn't even believe him, not really. She knows that when the day finally comes that he meets his soulmate, he'll think differently. If the whole thing can make Beatrice Duke pine away for a boy, surely it can make him feel that way too.

  
So when the end of summer comes and she has to go back home, she tries really hard not to look back.

  
******

  
"Watch your back, fuckface, I am coming for you. Sincerely, Beatrice Duke." With that said, she leans over and turns the camera off. She lets out deep sigh and looks over to Ben, giving an attempt at a smile which probably ends up looking more like a grimace. He gives a sad sort of smile in return and lifts his hand up to look at his watch.

  
"Woah, I didn't realise it was so late." He says, turning back to Bea. "You could stay over, if you want. Obviously you don't have to, but..." He trails off as she starts nodding slowly, biting her lip.

  
They both get ready for bed after Ben manages to find some old tracksuit bottoms for her to wear. Bea gets in to bed and falls asleep the second her head hits the pillow. She's been spending pretty much every waking moment trying to wrap her head around what's happened, so it doesn't leave much room for thinking at night.

  
Although they went to sleep very much on opposite sides of the bed, Beatrice wakes to find Ben still fast asleep, their legs tangled together and an arm thrown over her side. Just as she's starting to panic (just a little bit, it's just that it's _Ben_ and even though she doesn't even think about it any more, honestly, he's her _soulmate_ and maybe lately her feelings for him haven't been _entirely_ platonic), she looks down at the arm over her side and her breath hitches. Right there, without the watch that he usually wears over it, is his clock. No big deal, she tells herself, it's just the countdown to when he finds the love of his life, it's fine. That's until she realises that right there on his wrist is a big _zero_.

  
She tries not to, she really does, but before she can even stop herself her hand is reaching out and tracing over it, round and round. The repeated action manages to calm her down, enough that when she feels Ben stir a little next to her, she can put her hand over his wrist and drift back to sleep.

  
******

  
She spends the next two weeks definitely _not_ thinking about the fact that Ben has already met his soulmate and that she has no idea who it is. She wonders if Pedro and Claudio knew it had happened - their group of friends never really spoke about the soulmate thing, not after the first time they broached the subject and Beatrice had found herself glaring at the floor and trying not to blush bright red until they'd moved on to a safer topic of discussion.

  
The thing about not trying to think about something, is that you actually end up thinking about it a lot. Which is why, when they're sitting in Bea's house watching a movie together on the couch, she can't quite stop herself from turning around to look at him and blurting out, "Who's your soulmate?".

  
Ben chokes on his popcorn for a second and then makes a strangled noise that sounds something like " _WHAT_?" before swallowing his food and saying, "Sorry, what I meant to say was... Actually, no, I think _what_ sums up my thoughts quite well."

  
"I... uh. It's just that when I slept at yours you didn't have your watch on and I didn't mean to look, but I kind of, um... saw that your clock said zero. So." Bea gets out, managing to not quite look him in the eye as she says it. She knows how much of a private thing it is, it's just that it's _Ben_ and she's spent all this time dreading the day he met his soulmate (even though, you know, she totally doesn't have feelings for him, honestly), so for him to have met whoever it is already and her not know about it, it's kind of a big deal.

  
Ben frowns and looks to the floor, the ceiling, his hands, pretty much anywhere that's Beatrice's face before saying, "Oh, yeah, that. The thing is... you're kind of my soulmate or something? How weird is that, right?" He lets out a nervous laugh because, really, this situation is so not funny, it's kind of funny, except that it's not because it's been far too long and Bea's not even said anything in reply and it's actually scaring him a little bit.

  
That's until he looks over and her mouth is literally hanging open and her eyebrows are raised higher than he's ever seen them go and he's about to start properly laughing, but she starts talking. "Are you for real right now? I mean, actually for real? You're telling me that we've been soulmates this whole time and we've not even been doing anything about it? You didn't even tell me I was your _soulmate_!" She says, before she realises that, oops, she didn't tell him either. Even as she's thinking this, though, she realises that she's slipped up somewhere because Ben's face is practically splitting in two with the biggest grin she's ever seen.

  
" _We've_ been soulmates? You mean that... I'm yours too? You never talked about your clock, so I thought..." He trails off, shaking his head in disbelief because _is this actually happening right now_.

  
Bea rolls her eyes at this and says, "You're unbelievable. It counted down when we were fourteen!" and then, not able to take any more of this waiting, she leans over and finally kisses him.

 

******

  
They don't tell any of their friends until a few weeks later and, after explaining the whole story (including the clocks), the first words come from Meg, who says, "Oh my god. We were working with, like, _actual_ love gods!"  
 

**Author's Note:**

> this story basically arrived in my head almost fully written, so, yeah.  
> also i know it's daylight in "WORDS" but sometimes in summer it doesn't get dark until about 10:30pm so let's just say that happened.


End file.
